Graphene is a new type of 2D nanomaterial, whose tension strength reaches 1.01 Tpa, 100 times of that of steel while the density is only steel's ⅕. Since the traditional method can hardly promote the strength of metal material, graphene became another significant orientation for reinforcing the metal materials. Graphene is composed of one-molecule-thick planar sheet of sp2 bonded carbon molecules, which packed into a honeycomb network, ranging in length between 20 μm˜50 μm. Up-to-date, there are two main methods, physical and chemical, for synthesizing graphene and the latter one stands out as the primary strategy that can yield large amounts of chemically modified graphene. Due to the small density, it can improve the metal material strength while reducing the density of the material. Meanwhile Graphene also has ultra-high electron mobility (200000 cm2/V·S), electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity (5000 W/m·K) Young's modulus (1100 GPa), and other excellent performance, and therefore with regards graphene composite to aluminum, titanium, magnesium and other metal materials, it's expected to get lightweight, high strength materials with both electrical and thermal conductivity and other features integrated.
Due to the huge differences of the nature between the graphene and the metal material, it is difficult to mold graphene and metal matrix composite. It's found that both home and abroad methods, graphene reinforced metallic matrix composites are mainly using graphene powder mixed with metal powder by powder metallurgy process to prepare graphene reinforced material. There is no report on the use of graphene slurry to prepare graphene metal sheet composite.